Duet
by Under the Shadow
Summary: Jade find's herself broken and lost; Beck finds himself unfulfilled and searching. A future based story about memories and heartbreak.
1. Chapter 1

This picks up somewhere in the far future, probably when they're about 25 ish. i'm trying to turn this into a multi chapter fic. keyword being 'trying'.

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'For these arms are growing tired, and my tales are wearing thin.' - Duet by Rachael Yamagata

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JADE

You've been scared all your life, running away, cowering, always just so unbelievably scared. Scared of love, mostly; in any way and form, and it showed, from your coldness to the distance you've always put between you and your family, you and your friends. You have no idea why you're so scared, haven't had some traumatic episode that could have triggered your irrational fear; other than some family problems and small abandonment issues, you've had an easy life, rich parents that didn't hover at all, friend that accepted you somewhat, accepted your coldness and bitterness. You think it's funny that they can accept it all so easily when you yourself have such a hard time at it, it's not like you wanted to be this person, not that you wanted to be lonely and cold and all sharp edges. This isn't what you imagined for yourself when you were younger, you wanted flowers and cheers, crowds of people adoring you, friend and loved ones who could understand you and love you and be happy with you. You wanted fame, adventure, happiness, love and friendship. - Instead you got dead roses (always so much darker than you imagined you could ever prefer), crowds of people screaming and yelling instead of cheering, people admiring you, viewing you in awe (but never adoring), friends and loved ones that always stay at arm's length, never understanding, never sharing your joy (you're not sure what joy you so wish they could share). You got all the fame you could have hoped for, all the adventure possible, but none of the happiness (never any happiness), none of the love (you're somewhat relieved, love still scares the shit out of you), none of the friendships, not truly anyway. The fame and adventure doesn't seem to quite make up for all the dreams you've lost along the way.

Not that the fame hasn't been fun, not like the adventure and adrenalin didn't make you forget sometimes, forget that the happiness you feel on stage isn't real, that the euphoria won't last long, won't last as long as the cigarette and man you've chosen after every performance, and there's been a lot of smokes, and even more men. Men you don't ever remember, men that never stay past their duty, they're not there for anything else, naturally. They're not there to stay, not there for fondness, or heaven forbid, love. So they never stay at all (some of them don't even last as long as the cigarette). Not that you want them to stay, they're fun, and then they become baggage, and you've gotten tired of baggage at a very young age. Even more now that you have to carry all of your baggage along with you, now that you don't have a home other than your trailer of the month, or your apartment of the week. (You've had enough baggage after facing your fear of love once, only to have it thrown back in your face, your heart battered and scarred, your fear engorged into a phobia)

And what a phobia, now you can't even have people compliment you without throwing it back in their faces, without having to run away, without having to stomp on everyone in your path to get away (of course this only sparks stupid ideas of you being a diva, of you being too good for common mortals, and somehow these ideas make people awe you more, it's an endless cycle of your own demise that you can't escape no matter what). You can't keep a manager for over a year at a time, the moment they become familiar they have to go. You can't handle familiarity, not anymore. The only thing that seems familiar to you now is some old pictures, an old phone number you can't seem to throw away and some old rock cd's you always listen to. Not even your face looks that familiar, it doesn't portray who you are at all, it's just some mask you've picked up a few years ago that just can't seem to slip off even when she's all alone in the middle of another sleepless nights (there are too many sleepless nights, too many nightmares). You wonder when you stare in the mirror, whether he would be able to recognize you, he; of course being the cause of all of this, the cause of your phobia and your sleepless nights. You're pretty sure he won't even be able to pick you out in a crowd (you know this mostly because you somehow always go to his stupid premiers, somehow, of course because you've planned it, and that scares you, because you shouldn't want to see him, shouldn't constantly wish he could recognize you one day). You're pretty sure that, if it was possible, you wouldn't be able to pick yourself out in a crowd.

Sometimes you find yourself staring out of your temporary (always temporary) window, wishing and dreaming of having a permanent window, having a permanent view, having a permanent anything. Wishing all your dreams came true, wishing you weren't so scared, so broken, wishing you could have had someone to love and wishing it was possible for someone to love you. You dream about a family and a house and homemade food, homemade food made by a man to love, made by your (husband), you've never been able to make much more than toast. Naturally once you realize you're dreaming you scold yourself, you repeatedly tell yourself that there's no true love, no happy ending, no white picket fence and homemade food, definitely no husband. There can't ever be anything like that, can never be anything close to happiness, anything close to love, especially not with the speed you keep running away at. Then you wash away the dreams completely with more short lasting euphoria; smokes and strange men that will never want anything more than emotionless, rough sex. (sometimes the dreams come back in these times, invading your mind when you're doing exactly what you've dreamt of getting away from, and you find some lost tears soaking the pillow beneath you, not that any man will ever notice the tears).

He noticed the tears, you remember one day as you smoke. He noticed so much, too much. Of course, he didn't notice the tears when he walked away, didn't notice your destruction. When you remember that he didn't notice you dying that day (and the months following, years following), you forget that he remembered the idle tears that soaked his pillow, forgetting that gets you through your smoke, and through the few weeks that follow. It doesn't stop your dreaming though, doesn't stop the idle tears soaking his forgotten shirt that you still wear, still sleep in sometimes. (You wish you could stop wearing it and just burn it, along with the memories that cause the tears.)

You wish you could burn all of it; your fears, your dreams and tears, memories and fame. You wish you could sometimes burn yourself away, just to stop wishing and dreaming, to stop remembering, to stop being so afraid.


	2. Chapter 2

I'm pretty sure this one sucks

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BECK

You've been happy, truly you have. Between all your dreams coming true, all the fame and adventure you've ever dreamed about, good friends that understand and care about you – happiness has been a key factor in your life. You couldn't have dreamt of life coming out more right, of being more successful or dreaming of more. But somehow, lately, you have dreamt of more, have dreamt of something bigger or more important. Strangely enough, lately, all the happiness you have doesn't seem like enough anymore (it never truly was enough, but you've always been a good actor, always been able to fool yourself as well as everybody else that it has been enough.). somehow, now that you think about it, you realize that somehow, there has always been something missing, something vital to the life you've wanted for yourself (always, naturally, starting at a foggy day in a memory where you walked away).

There are things that you miss, things from your past, like your mom's pancakes and people, the people from your past, that one person from your past. You don't want to miss these things, you've never been able to make pancakes that are half as good as the ones your mom made, and you've never been able to fill the holes left by the people you loved (your mom, her.), and it's not like you haven't tried extremely hard to forget those people, to find a way to live without their memory following you around, but they stay with you. She stays with you; all big eyes and sharp edges. You had such different dreams when you still had these people in your life. You dreamt of silly things like children and a small life (with the fame and fortune still there, but not as big, not as important as the family). Back then you dreamt of love. Those dreams still follow you around some days. But other than back then, all those things seem very impossible now.

Sometimes you imagine that you see someone resembling her at some of your premiers, but you're probably just mistaking someone else for her, there is no logical reason for her to be there, and even if there was, you've been avoiding anything even remotely related to her completely for the last few years that she probably doesn't even look the same, that you probably can't even pick her apart from anyone else. You've been avoiding anything that reminds you of her, even thrown away all the old records, all the clothes and books; anything that brings back memories. Except for a silly necklace that's hanging on a peg in your bedroom. You wanted to throw that away as well, tried so hard, but you couldn't manage to, no matter how hard you tried. The necklace holds so many memories, so many old ideas, old people. The necklace holds all the old dreams that you've given up on. Ironically, the necklace is the first thing you see when you wake up form a dream, a lot of them about her (not even your subconscious can seem to be able to let go.).

The necklace reminds you of a time that was happy, a time where you were truly happy. Not all the time of course; thins were new and tough and sensitive, but underneath any hardships there was always happiness. That's all different now, it's all gone the separate way; now it's like there are a lot of good times, a lot of dreams coming true, fame and adventure and fun, but underneath it all there's loss and loneliness, lies and promises you broke years ago that still follow you around to remind you of all you could have done better. Now that loss and loneliness define you like happiness defined you once. You're a lot different now as well: your carefree and easygoing nature had turned into an urge to control everything you come in contact with and an anger that you can't sate, can't get rid of no matter how much time passes. You're pretty sure it's because you can't escape the person that you're angry with, can't escape the truth about the reasons why you're angry, the memories that you're angry about.

You miss who you were back then; miss being carefree and careless, miss having all that joy that just seemed to hang around you no matter what might have been going on, no matter how many fights might have broken out between you and her. You miss your aloofness that you seemed to carry about you then. You probably shouldn't miss all of that, shouldn't miss the carelessness and aloofness; if you hadn't have had it back then you wouldn't have walked away when you did (although the relationship had been flawed and unhealthy), you would have stayed and acted on the tears that stained your pillow on the nights when she stayed over, you would have done more than just notice the tears. So you really shouldn't miss the way you were, but you do. You miss making jokes all the time; now everything is perceived as so serious. All plans and deadlines and tasks instead of fun and jokes and ambition. Somewhere along the line, you're pretty sure you forgot what it is to be alive, and you miss being alive.

You miss a lot of things

Her, most of all.

You still have your old friends, and you cherish them for what they are, what they represent, for the memories they bring with them. Some of them you don't have any more of course; Cat left, just one day out of the blue, without telling anyone or saying goodbye. But you figure that she's found happiness and you can't begrudge her that. Jade left, not that she was a friend there at the end, not that you really ever could have called her a friend. With her it was always much less or much more, never just. She left, also without telling or saying goodbye, and you're not sure where she went to. You can probably find out anything you might want to know about her present life within a few minutes of internet searches, or by asking around, but you don't really want to find out, don't want to see whether she might have been successful (you're already about eighty percent sure she is, there's no way all that ambition and fire could have turned into anything less than fame and all her dreams coming true).

You would prefer never knowing what happened to her, she's probably having it all, all you dreamt of having with her, and you would rather only miss than have to endure. You're so used to missing things, missing her.

Mostly you've just been good at running away and then missing what you ran away from. You haven't quite been successful at running away from yourself. But you've been missing yourself most of all.


End file.
